Joint Submission to the Human Rights Committee by the American Civil Liberties Union, Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic, the International Commission of Jurists, the Open Society Justice Initiative, and Rights Watch (UK).

Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic, the International Commission of Jurists, the Open Society Justice Initiative, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Rights Watch (UK) welcome the opportunity to provide the Human Rights Committee (the Committee) with the following observations on its draft General Comment on Article 6 (the draft) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the Covenant) on the right to life, ahead of its second reading. The following submission focuses exclusively on five right to life issues relating to the use of force:

I. General scope of Article 6;
II. Rules governing the use of force under Article 6;
III. Extraterritorial use of force;
IV. Use of force in situations of armed conflict; and
V. The duty to investigate incidents involving the use of force.

The submission will touch upon aspects of paragraphs 7, 14, 16, 18, 19, 23, 24, 26,
31, 32, 33, 66, and 67 in the Committee’s draft.